The Doctor on Rose Tyler
by sylphie3000
Summary: Rose is the Doctor's greatest nightmare and his greatest light all at once. This touches on multiple headcannons of mine, so if you don't like that kind of territory i don't think this story's for you. just a drabble-y thing to try to get me out of my creative slump. oneshot. R&R please.


**So, I haven't been writing a lot recently. I've started a bunch of stories, but dropped halfway through in my search to find something original to write. Am I that stereotypical that I can't write anything out of the box? Ugh. I love writing, I really do, but it's just so bloody **_**hard**_**. Either way, have a drabble; it's the best I can do in this creative slump of mine. Oh, and by the way, I don't own DW or basically anything in this, just the idea.  
**

Oh, the things I've done in my 1200-odd years. The things I've seen, heard, felt, and oh Rassilon, the things I've done. I've destroyed planets, erased my best friend's memory, watched my two later friends fall to their deaths, and sent my wife to hers without even knowing who in the hell she was. I've sacrificed far more lives than I've ever saved, and still people call me "Doctor," or "saviour," when they don't even know me. They barely even scratch the surface of who I am, of what I've done. I've earned my nicknames. "The Oncoming Storm." "The Destroyer of Worlds." Before I'm anything else, I am those, and nobody, not Amy, not Rory, not Clara or Martha, not even River three fourths of the time, can see it.

Only one person in all of my memory could ever tell who _exactly_ I was. She was beautiful, radiant, powerful. She was completely ordinary and completely extraordinary; she was the Bad Wolf. She was Rose Marion Tyler, and the one and only person I would ever love with all my hearts. Don't get me wrong-I care for River, quite a bit actually, more than I ever expected- but the love I feel for her is small compared to that which I have for Rose, and she knows it. Rose was, is, and always will be, everything to me. She was my light and my joy, and now she's my nightmare. She's the reason I wake up sweating in the night, why I don't talk about my past, and what I think about when I'm completely sure I'm about to die.

She's my greatest regret, to put it bluntly. It was how we lived, carefree and lively and without any thought to the future, and how we died. When she let go of that lever, it was that look in her eyes that killed me. _I'm sorry. So, so sorry_, it said to me. It was terrified and loving and apologetic all at once and it was my fault that that look was there, my fault she was about to die, my fault that she was trapped away from her own home against her will. I saw that look again four years later, even though I never wanted to. She sounded angry and defiant, yes, I would've too in that situation, but her eyes were pleading and begging and _God_ it took all my self control not to lean in and snog her right then and there.

But of course I didn't, self sacrificing git I was back then. I let her look at me with those big eyes, took a breath, and said the most idiotic thing anyone has ever said in the history of the universe. _Does it need saying?_ Of course it needed saying; if it didn't, she wouldn't have asked. Those eyes of hers turned angry and sad, and that was the last I saw of Rose Tyler. She turned away from me then, and I turned away from her a moment later, that last gaze following me away from her and a possible future. Those eyes haunt me now, and always will.

Amy's the Girl Who Waited, Clara's the Impossible Girl, and I'm the Doctor. Everyone seems to have these grandiose titles nowadays. It just seems fitting, somehow, to give the love of my life one: Rose Tyler: the Girl Who Loved? No, cheesy. She was rather well known as the Defender of the Earth, but that holds no meaning for me now. No, my Rose needs something that describes her, at her very core. Something that I can say to River, who knows all of my companions, and she'll know exactly who I'm talking about. How about The Girl Who Ran? That was the first word I said to her, after all. _Run._ We did quite a bit of running, more than any other companion in recent memory, so it makes sense.

Rose Tyler: The Girl That Loved, the Girl That Said, the Girl That Dared, The Defender of the Earth, The Doctor's Love, and the Girl Who Ran.

I laugh wryly, and no one looks or asks why, because no one's there.


End file.
